zumpoems

Feckless Degeneracy with some Windmill Jousting
  – an epic in several belches –

Belch the First – by way of prolegomena

Of arms and the man I sing
id est, of a man with arms
and hands for that matter
and nothing to do with them other
than push gliding yellow felt
across the faceless fees
of contract physicians
dealing the new deal daily
to the deaf
shipbuilders and jet mechanics
and the incompetent
OSHA oafs of Oshkosh
and Oklahoma
Sucking the blood of the body politic
politely
with a yellow felt pen
Felt pen is
all
he’s felt
lately
so come, muse
for someone should
and tell of the
student-cum-bureaucrat
the man with arms
and hands with
nothing to do
but
pay bills
and
perhaps
go blind

Belch the Second – in medias res (so what else is new?)

A brown caffeine haze
like the stained inversion layer
of womb-city L.A.
swirled buzzing beneath
his 4:30 AM skull
like a Santa Ana
locked in Aeolus’ cave
bleary
blurry
burned
home to Germantown
where the rosy-cheeked
firm-breasted
wives
of the power-corridor
stalkers
make their living
doing T.V. ads
for Cheer
Wisk
Breeze
and disposable douches
Brown and nondescript
his mentality
and
the 2 unkempt letters
on his unkempt bed
from an unkempt friend
a mad composer
Beethoven of software
UNIVAC of the mad pipes
and unorthodox tunes
and keeper of a faith
in which all have lost faith
but a miniscule
few

Insanity issues
from the violated
envelopes
rushing
leaping
prancing
like a horde of lusting shoppers
at Macy's white sale
bringing back
the shades, demons, ghosts, apparitions, & specters
of times past
when mastodons stalked the earth
and loons reigned, then,
and rationality belonged
to serfs
and the lords of bats
sat wiggo and lecherous
in a Coco’s booth
sucking the bean
and contemplating rape
Jolly jester gestures jump
from penciled pages
and in a laughing gasp
grabbed the
felt pen pusher
by corduroy lapels
howling
"Write!
for the faith is dwindling
like a soft candle-stump
its fleeting flame flickering faintly
from a shriveled wick.

Write!
For I am playing pool
and snooker
with a drunken busboy Lothario
the 2 of us
Lear and his fool
leering and fooling
around
with a round
girl and her
quoit-visaged female companion.
Write!
for the roundtable is broken
with the tennis player
salesman for Bridgeford
talking Tupperware and
household appliances
as he flies to Dallas.
With the great beard
Sleaze of times past
Falstaff with a joint
now playing it cool
in high finance
at the bastion
of upper-middle class
white vacuity
in Watts.
With the genius leader
of liberated wit
doing a Ulysses gig
in Asia
beaming knowledge into
little brown people
and contrition, obscurity
for the white man’s burden.
Write!
for it’s been so long,
I find tacos erotic
and Don Jose’s
threw me out
for
fondling
a quesadilla.
Write!
Right?”

“Right.”
Thus murmured the pen-pusher
toddling, tottering off
to sleep
to wake with the sun
and, at the school
the afternoon next
he gripped
his pen
violently
determined
and thought
Thank God Freud
is
dead.

Belch the Third — Arlington National Cemetery is my disco

So
the student
who feeds himself
with a yellow felt pen
and writes arcane
monographs
of the arabesque
convolutions
of
the politics in
Riyadh
and Jiddah
essayed
assessed
saying sayings
not quite sane
what he means
is what he said
Sotos speaks
so to speak.

An auspicious year
the best of the 20th
Sophocles’ 3 Stooges
Clotho & her Cronies
gave the Greek grief
early
tried to hand him a
couple of brooches
to do a number
on his bespectacled orbs
but he’d seen that one
before
So they packed up their spinning wheel
and headed for Ft. Lauderdale
lawn chair lounging
but not until
his transmission got up
and walked away from his
Merc
18 miles west of Phoenix
to the tune of
half a thousand
clams
If it wasn’t for the
pen pusher’s
plastic money
and smiling despair
he’d be flipping burgers
on Camelback Avenue
Wearing a Marlboro Stetson
snakeskin pasture pounders
and calling home
the T.V. and Gideon Bible
at the El Rokay Lodge.

Jojo's has crept like
mildew across a map
and Visa-financed
peasant lunches
kept the moustache
nourished all across the
continent.

Back to the city
of marble buildings
and minds with
few marbles
where the town namesake
“Father of His Country”
has a phallic monument
to mock
the yellow felt-pen
scrivener
whose social life
is on display
next to the stuffed
dodo
at the Smithsonian
and labeled
“Extinct.”

Well,
can’t complain
one supposes,
even though
the only thing between
the student bureaucrat
and a morals rap
is an iron will
and
saltpeter for breakfast.

Lots of late
nocturnal revelry
with Eve’s daughters
watching omelets
feed a Charybdis
appetite,
or
catching two-dollar
talkies
at the Circle.
Taystee Diner,
bean brew,
juke box jokes
as Hall & Oates,
Simon & Garfunkel
and Queen eat
my quarters
Coupla babes
     a lanky blonde,
     a petite brunette
(I’m a blonde
sorta,
maybe).
[If you’re a blonde
I’m Grover Cleveland]
But the pen-pusher
knows,
through the cruel anvil
of experience,
never argue with a
woman
Their logic
makes minds'
Minotaur maze
looks like I-10
between Quartzite
and Phoenix
so
peace dictates
saying
he’s been out late
with 2
buxom blondes
(and call the pen-pusher Grover Cleveland).
Fun
ladies
and dynamite looks
socko
boffo
knockouts
but
as for romance
my social life
is in formaldehyde
at
D.C. morgue
waiting
for someone
to identify
it.

Belch the Fourth — Ambition rides the Metro, but still
                   can’t get a seat.

Thrice
has the world spun
encompassing
ol’ Sol
in completed circuits
since
the Golden Greek
marched east
like Alexander
to conquer
Persia-on-the-Potomac
Thrice.
Most of those who
entered grad school
with the golden Greek
(before he cultivated
the yellow felt pen
to streak the
beige
bilious
bills
at Fran Perkins' Annex
(on 14th & NY, NW)
Most of those
who dared
demonic dementia
to
cut academia’s umbilical
with a
sheepskin rectangle
have
and got spewed
into
limbo

Alexander
pushes the yellow
felt pen
and checks the views
on the Strait of Hormuz
holding court
Doing okay
if you
are
a
tortoise
All done
excepting
100 pages
of
shoveling
so
let’s look
for
birth
in May ’82
unless
alma mater
aborts
Meantime
there’s always
yellow felt pens
and green
enough
money

It
all
adds up
to the
bottom
line which is the theory
of
relativity
flattened
in the templates of grad school
to wit
master programs stretch like taffy over time the faster 
you
work and time goes gossamer tenuous and ephemeral
and
e...t...e...r...n...i...t...y
is
the... last... gasp... of... pondering... postgraduate... programs
while
your
transcript
grins
and
yawns
at once

Belch the Fifth — if life gives you meatballs, make albóndigas

Beckoning
from beyond
the lips of
an
unborn year
are the evergreen
plastic vegetables
that live
only
in refrigerators on display
at
Sears & Montgomery Ward
Come
come
We are the vegetables
of legitimacy
of actuality
and
your folks’ approval
eat
and
could we interest you in life
insurance?

Rustling
from behind
in those dim
glow worm grottos
at the
base of
your
mind
are the petrified
relics
Memories
of a golden age
long tarnished
return
return
return unused portion
of your life
for
a
*full refund*
Slapping
your back
with
ghostly hands
guffaws
Why be a
frog
when
you make one
helluva
tadpole?

Polystyrene peas
aren’t going to make
it
Julia Child or
no
Yet you
can’t keep
the cranium
small
while the cerebrum
expands
unless
you
want to
grow
lobes
out your
ears

The abyss
  between
the plastic veggies and petrified pasts
is
the
only
place
to call
home
and
keep
your honor

The bricks
and
mortar
of
this
balancing house
are
words
the hardshells
of
deranged thoughts
that
maintain continuity
with the solid
past
and laugh
like
a
strait-jacket model
   making
   time
at Camarillo State:
the
faceless featureless
chaos
of the
unraveling future.

Belch the Last — by way of epilogue

The song is done,
Muse,
evaporated like
Borden’s milk
and the balance
in my
checking account
the yellow felt pen pusher
pushes
on
staining
audiologist indices
and the lives
he has
touched
like a
Mexican dinner
The time-space continuum
has
swallowed
the
Golden Greek
yellow felt pen
and
all
and
he inches
along
the
cosmic alimentary canal

But soft
like
that
Mexican dinner
cheap
and satisfying
he may return
with an acrid
burp
to remind
the party
of
what once
was.

—Zumwalt (May 1981)